Over the past few months, I was a reporting intern for the business section of The Miami Herald. I didn’t blog during that time, mainly because I had no Internet access at home.

But I did want to post the essay I wrote for my independent study credit about the experience. It’s not meant to be a report of what went on — just what I learned.  Especially if you’re a journalism student, I hope you read it. I learned more about what my future holds from this internship than from any class in my J-school.

… is at http://atthealligator.wordpress.com/

I’m just going to face it.

My blog is going to go by the wayside this semester.

This blog, that is. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean I won’t be blogging. I’m taking a class with multimedia professor extraordinaire Mindy McAdams that requires me to write two posts a week on a blog.

Sadly, I can’t use an already-existing blog for the class, so I can’t use this one. I’ve run an idea past Mindy, and she was positive about it, so hopefully that blog will launch Tuesday. I’ll post here linking to it and post the link on Twitter. It’s still going to be journalism-related, considering this requirement from the class Web site:

Your blog topic, which will consume your life for the next 12 weeks. Please choose a topic in which you are really, truly, deeply interested.

As I’m sure is obvious by now, the sum total of my interests is either directly or tangentially related to journalism. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with a blog on any other subject.

In other news, I’m working a lot and trying to keep up with school, which I’m doing suprisingly well at. I’ll try to post occasionally, keep up on Tweet o’ the Week and share any developments in my career plans.

I kind of see working at a student paper as like playing house.

It’s like playing house because, as managing editor of the Alligator, I hold a position I would never hold at any other paper. I’m 20, and I feel like I’m playing at being a grownup.

But here’s the problem with that analogy: running a student paper is anything but play. In terms of news content, you have the ability to really make a difference. And as anyone who has ever worked at his or her student paper knows, it’s really a full-time job. I’m managing people — people who care about their jobs as much as I do, and who care about getting the news out.

And even though I like to think of the Alligator staffers as competent journalists, the truth is: we’re all young. We are all, to some degree, inexperienced.

If the pen is mightier than the sword — well, we’re flying bombers at young ages. The paper has the potential to make people incredibly proud or incredibly angry; see the cartoon scandal.

That means the Alligator has problems that a well-oiled, well-managed decades-old newsroom wouldn’t face. Add the high staff turnover from semester to semester to that, and you’ve got a management nightmare.

Student paper though we are, we’re the biggest student paper in the country. We have a huge voice in our community, which means the editorial board needs to strive to make decisions with the discretion people twice our age struggle to harness.

I’ve realized over the past week how tough this job is going to be. Turning people down for jobs is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever done. I’m finally understanding the apology and nervousness in a former Alligator editor’s voice as she called to tell me someone else had been given a job I’d applied for.

Managing means listening and communicating, but it also means making tough decisions and not always making people happy.

Making people unhappy is not my specialty. I’m the girl who, growing up, would let my sister win when we played board games just so she wouldn’t turn over the board or quit playing. But that’s a skill set I’m going to have to learn. I’ve got to be able to put the good of the paper over situations that make me uncomfortable.

I think this semester is going to make me a better journalist and give me experience I might otherwise have only come into 15 years down the road. It’s going to be tough. I’m going to have to seek out the advice of the older and wiser journalists in my life.

I’m so happy to be in this position — and I’m going to do my best to live up to all it entails, even the unpleasant parts.

This week, I’m putting bookends on the shelf of my early journalism endeavors.

Today, I got interviewed for the position of managing editor for print at the Independent Florida Alligator, where I’ve spent so much of my life since I started working there in January of 2007.

I got the job, and I’ll be working with Ken Schwencke, who is managing editor for online, and Jessie DaSilva, who is editor in chief.

I don’t think it’s possible to put into words how grateful I am for this opportunity, but I’m a journalist, so I’ll try.

I’m beyond excited to be able to manage a newsroom and work on interpersonal communication. It’s a job where my top priority is talking to people and getting to know their problems, concerns and triumphs, which is rewarding. I also get to play a part in the coverage of news, both in Gainesville and at the University of Florida.

It’s a big responsibility, yes, but I can’t wait to take it on with people who I see as friends and as great journalists.

On Monday, I’ll end my internship at the San Antonio Express-News, which has exceeded my expectations of what an internship could be. I’ve learned so much there about reporting, being edited and working in a newsroom, and I’ll be sad to go.

I’ve done stories on everything, whether it was animals, shootings or weather. It’s been crazy and sometimes stressful, but I’ve loved all of it.

I’m looking forward to what my last year as a college student will bring. And I’ll be blogging all of it.

scottkarp

I heart Twitter.

For those who don’t know what Twitter is, here’s the description the Web site gives:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?“

So basically, Twitter is saying what you’re doing at any given moment in time in a small space, which is then shared with the people who “follow” your updates.

At first, I wasn’t sure. It seemed kind of like a stalker tool.

But then I started using it. And I was surprised how easy it was to get involved in the online journalism world. It’s like mini, 140-character limited blog posts.

What I love about Twitter is what I love about the blogosphere, only enhanced: It’s a great opportunity to bounce ideas off of people, some more experienced than you, and get instant feedback. It’s having a conversation that everyone can see and join.

For instance, yesterday I asked “General opinion question: When interviewing teens/preteens for news features, should you get a parent’s permission?” I wanted to know for a story I’m working on. Within minutes, I had a few responses.  It’s a really great opportunity to get different, professional points of view.

And in essence, that’s what I love and crave about journalism: The constant feed of ideas, opinions and information.

Twitter definitely has its tech issues. And, like any group of nerds, we have our lingo. But it’s easy to learn — get started, join the conversation and hope you don’t encounter the infamous “Fail Whale.”

My username is hilaryalehman for anyone who wants to follow me on Twitter (I also have an RSS feed in my sidebar). And some of the more active journalism users, to start you off, are jiconoclast (Patrick Thornton), jdasilva (Jessie DaSilva), jayrosen_nyu (Jay Rosen), bydanielvictor (Daniel Victor), ryansholin (Ryan Sholin),  selfmadepsyche (Megan Taylor), and meranduh (Meranda Watling). That’s really only a sample. If you want to see a complete list of people I follow on Twitter, click here.

Which brings me to my next point. I’d like to introduce a weekly segment of my favorite journalism twitter of the week. So, drumroll, please:

Tweet o’ the week, July 18-25: jayrosen_nyu

Having finally achieved the Intern Grail of having a story on the
front page, I got to thinking: what factors go into making a story
front-page worthy?

I clearly am not the authority on this, having broken A1 all of one
time in my 10 weeks here, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from being
around People Who Know Stuff.

How to crack the front page during your internship, In My Humble Opinion:

1) Cover a really big breaking news story. The setback to this plan:
You are an intern. Depending upon what paper you’re interning at, you
might not have the opportunity to cover the big news stories. Those
stories will often go to reporters who have proved their ability to
cover big stories on deadline.

2) Do your research. Find out what issues are important to the
community. I knew the animal shelter story had created controversy
before, and it’s on my beat, so I thought I would pursue it. If you
can dig into something high-profile, the potential is greater for that
story to have better play in the newspaper.

3) Be newsy. Even if you’re working on a feature, tie it to something
happening now. It might be interesting, but if you don’t have a news
peg, your story is likely to be buried.

4) Be original. Another story on how cool long-lasting lightbulbs are
or the potential for ethanol research, even if you have a valid news
peg, probably won’t make your section front. I’ve found that even
weaker “news” stories with an original angle usually get section-front
play, if not better. Combine Nos. 3 and 4, and you’re gold.

5) Be enterprising. Many of my best stories so far have been stories
I’ve found on my own. As cheesy as it sounds, you bring your own point
of view to the news, and that’s valuable. If you think something is
interesting, pitch it. Not having been in the same newsroom for years
gives you fresh eyes on the issues that editors often welcome. Plus,
enterprise gives you a clip that shows off all your skills as a
reporter, from conception to execution.

So I’m late to the game here, considering this story ran last week on Wednesday, but I did have my first Page One story of my internship. It was a story I pitched, about the progress Animal Care Services has made two years into a five-year plan to end euthanasia in the city shelter system.

Cue confetti, streamers, etc.

This was a hard story to do. As my editor said, it could have been twice as long, but I underbudgeted (whoops). Also as my editor said, that’s the new discipline — squeezing a lot of information into a small amount of space. Thus, a progress report on two years of city work in 25 inches.

Plus, it’s difficult when you know a story will generate public interest, but isn’t going to generate the type of public interest everyone necessarily wants. I know Animal Care Services was hoping for something more positive — but I report the news, which isn’t necessarily the news as they see it. I was careful in this story to make sure I had someone from the city respond to every criticism because I didn’t want it to be a hatchet job. I also wanted to show that some progress had been made. But whether that progress was enough — well, that was something the public had to decide.

Something I didn’t expect that was a side-effect of the story was that I had several phone calls and e-mails inquiring about a basset hound that was in the photo accompanying the story. From that interest generated, I’m sure he got adopted.

It’s always good to have a reminder that you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time and that sometimes it’s hard to write a story that shows all sides of the issue.

This story was that reminder for me.

Summary of this blog post: The two cops reporters who had a baby be born and went on vacation, requiring me to serve on the cops desk Sunday night, picked a really bad time to do those things.

I kid. Kind of.

I trained for the cops beat last Thursday under the tutelage of a fellow intern — relatively uneventful, other than the FBI digging at a local landfill and a press conference I had to jump over a train to get to. (Yeah, about that — the train was stalled in front of where we needed to be, cue jumping across train platform. I didn’t really think the press conference was all THAT important, but hey, I just do what they tell me. And yes, I was terrified the train would start moving.)

So when I say that was uneventful, well, I compare it to my first night working night cops.

OK: Night cops. If you’ve never worked a cops shift before, it’s honestly an entirely different breed of journalism. You’re always listening to the police/fire department scanners, trying to pick up the words “DOA,” “Hurst tool” (the jaws of life), or, even better, “shooting.”

Before I had gotten there, the cops reporter before me had written a brief on the drive-by shooting of a 6-month-old girl that had happened overnight. So I took the police scanners from her and started my shift.

Night cops on Sunday is usually pretty tame, especially in San Antonio, which up until now I considered a pretty boring city.

Until about 4, things seemed to be going that way. Then I picked up “shooting” on the scanner.

I frantically call police dispatch, Mapquest where this place is, and head out in the company jeep used by cops reporters.

As I’ve noted before, I have an awful sense of direction. Somehow, I manage not to get lost and make it to the scene.

No one was dead; there were no pools of blood in the street. There had, however, been a drive-by shooting that caused a driver to “badly negotiate a right turn” (the police sergeant’s words, not mine) and hit a house/gas line. One of the passengers was grazed in the arm. A TV reporter found out I was the Express-News intern and said, “Oh, they let you do this? That’s cool.”

I head back, write up a brief and give it to my editor. I head out to the 6-month-old’s house to see if I can talk to her family. No one’s there, so I head back to work. I’m almost there when I hear the word “shooting” again on the scanner.

It’s about 9:30 at this point, so I pull up Mapquest again and head back out.

I’m at the same exit I’ve taken once before today when I realize I’m at the same neighborhood as the last drive-by. This time, two people have been shot with bullets, and two kids have been injured by shattered glass. No one’s life is threatened, but the street is filled with ambulances, cop cars and TV reporters “going live,” so it’s a bit more intimidating.

I go back to work and write up another brief. I hear the word “shooting” another time on the scanner and want to cry.

“You’re just not going to catch a break tonight,” my editor says.

I call police dispatch and find out it’s only a house in the same neighborhood that was shot — no people.

By now, my briefs have been combined into a story, since three kids were hurt in a 24-hour period in drive-bys.

I’ve put the cop-reporter jeep into the garage, and I’m getting ready to leave for the night when I hear that a man has been shot in the chest in — you guessed it — a drive by. It’s in pecan valley, which after the first three shootings I recognize by name as being in the same neighborhood.

It’s 11:45, and I’m only 15 minutes from my shift being over. I’ve also just parked the jeep.

“Do I have to go out again?” I ask my editor.

She tells me to get what details I can over the phone. I do, and dictate across the room as she’s leaning over the page designer’s shoulder editing the story.

Finally, I get to go home and sleep.

“At least you got a story out of it,” my editor says.

At least I did.